Sexy social sciences

Two weeks from now the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy at UP will be holding another extramural workshop, an event that has been drawing a growing number of participants looking for continuing education. Last summer the focus was on myths in the social sciences (e.g., the Kalantiaw Code). This October it will be on gender and sexuality.

I have to admit when my two associate deans told me about the chosen topic, I actually thought, “Oh no, not another workshop on gender and sexuality.” I lecture all the time on those topics with non-government organizations and with medical schools, and so I was feeling somewhat weary at the thought of sponsoring still another workshop on those topics.

Then I had to remind myself social scientists, especially those teaching in high schools and colleges, have an important role in helping people to deal with gender and sexuality issues. This responsibility of providing skills and tools for social scientists took on greater urgency when a graduate student in public health approached me for an interview to ask about progress in implementing the National AIDS Law’s provisions on HIV/AIDS education in schools.

Although I was part of the first National AIDS Council that drafted that law, I had forgotten that there were provisions in that law requiring that HIV/AIDS education should be integrated into the curricula of secondary and tertiary institutions. The graduate student showed me a CHEd (Commission on Higher Education) Memorandum Order dating back to 2000 directing tertiary institutions to integrate HIV/AIDS education into natural/biological sciences, general psychology, and general sociology. The following year, still another memorandum order was issued offering a free Faculty Handbook on HIV/AIDS Prevention Education in Higher Education and providing that “only faculty members who have had orientation on HIV/AIDS prevention shall be allowed to teach the subject (HIV/AIDS prevention).”

I am certain all those provisions have only been weakly implemented, in part because of the opposition of conservatives to any kind of sexuality education in schools.  A few years back when our college began to offer Soc Sci 3 or “Exploring Gender and Sexuality,” the Inquirer published a letter from a UP biology student protesting the course and arguing such a course was not appropriate for an institution like UP. An editorial cartoon followed, showing a woman in a skimpy outfit teaching the course.

There was also fire and fury in the mass media coverage of Catholic bishops opposing the use of Department of Education materials for sexuality education in high schools. Opposition to the materials, which included HIV prevention, for high schools made a great fuss about discussions on condoms.

In the dark

All this puts our young people at great risk, not just to HIV/AIDS but also to a number of reproductive and sexual health problems, from unwanted pregnancies to sexually transmitted diseases other than HIV/AIDS.

We cannot continue this way, keeping our young in the dark.  Last year in a biological anthropology class, I was discussing antibiotic resistance to illustrate how evolution and natural selection works. I explained that the indiscriminate use of particular antibiotics results in the proliferation of bacteria that are resistant to those drugs. This happened, I explained, with gonorrhea, in part because men would take antibiotics as a “preventive” before going to a brothel, and also take these medicines whenever they suspected they had been infected with gonorrhea. Today, the penicillins and tetracyclines no longer work against gonorrhea, which is a sexually transmitted disease.

I was about to continue when a student raised his hand and asked me what gonorrhea was. I was flabbergasted. This was a class of UP juniors. I wondered if our students were that innocent, then corrected myself, perhaps not innocent, but ignorant of facts that they should have picked up as early as high school.

Protecting the young

Conservatives argue that talking about sex to young people makes them want to have sex. I will argue that talking about sex, and sexuality, prepares young people to protect themselves from—and I will repeat the points I made earlier—unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted illnesses and HIV/AIDS.  Even more importantly though, talking about sex and sexuality in schools gives the students a safe environment where they can ask questions they wouldn’t dare bring up with their parents. That, plus interactions with other young people, allows a more relevant discussion of issues that are important in their lives, all the way up to their relationships.

We have chosen to deprive the young of information on gender and sexuality issues, pretending we can keep them innocent and safe that way. The statistics belie that assumption. We have some 150,000 adolescent girls becoming mothers each year. And we have young people being infected with sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea and not knowing what hit them. Finally, I have attended workshops with people who are HIV positive, and have met students from UP and from other universities I work with.  Their stories are always the same, boiling down to a terrible combination of not having the facts on HIV/AIDS and youthful notions of invincibility. (“I won’t get infected.”)

The workshop my college is organizing is not focused on HIV/AIDS but it will give the broader social context to understand and to prevent HIV/AIDS as well as other problems tied to sex and sexuality. I will give the introductory talk to define the issues around gender and sexuality. We will then have Dr. Maria Luisa Camagay talking about women in Philippine history (did you know we’ve had large numbers of women working in factories since the 19th century?), Dr. Neil Santillan and Dr. Vicente Villan about men in Philippine history (how did our traditions of the maginoo, the timawa, the babaylan influence our notions of masculinity today?), lawyer Efenita Taqueban on law, gender and sexuality, Dr. Theresa Batangan on developmental aspects. There will be some out-of-the-box topics like Mikael Navarro on researching gender and sexuality, Asst. Prof. Eric Manalastas on “sexual citizenship” and Asst. Prof. Cherrie Joy Billedo on “love in a time of IT or Information Technology.” We have a surprise speaker on religion and sexuality, and Dr. Edelina de la Paz to talk about medical issues. Asst. Prof. Jay Yacat will give the last talk about gender and sexuality issues in school settings.

I’m quite proud of the lineup, feeling we will break new ground here. We’ve chosen not to focus so much on the problems and deal instead with practical issues and the social and historical forces that have shaped Filipino genders today and sexuality. I’m hoping the lectures can generate materials that can go back to the Department of Education and to the CHEd to create a more context-based approach not just for preventing HIV/AIDS but for enhancing young people’s sexuality, with lessons on respect and responsibility that can be passed on to future generations.

The workshop is from Oct. 26 to 28. It is endorsed by the CHEd. For more information, contact the office of the associate dean for administration and extension: 926-2511 or 981-8500 local 2436. Or 0920-9690549. Email address: [email protected]